PNNL-21628

Prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-76RL01830

Establishment of Northwest Building Testbeds: Final Progress Report DL Stiles August 2012

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PNNL-21628

Establishment of Northwest Building Testbeds: Final Progress Report

Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

Building Technologies Program

PNNL Project Manager: Mr. Dennis Stiles HQ Technology Development Manager: Ms. Arah Schuur DL Stiles August 2012 Prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-76RL01830 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Richland, Washington 99352

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1. Introduction

The Northwest Building Testbed project established a set of 101 single-family residential buildings that are fully metered to acquire data on residential energy usage. These 101 occupied homes were recruited with two objectives in mind. First, to compile detailed end use data for a period of at least two years (calendar years 2012 and 2013), providing up-to-date information about residential energy consumption and load characteristics. Secondly, it is hoped that in the future these homes can be used to evaluate various energy efficiency technologies and/or program strategies, with a minimum of one year’s metering data providing a baseline for comparison with post-modification/intervention energy consumption. The project was jointly funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) – Building Technologies Program (BTP), and the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA). The project was jointly directed by NEEA and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), beginning in October 2010 and concluding with completion of metering system installation in December 2011. NEEA will continue to collect data from these homes through the end of calendar year 2013 (at a minimum) and during the 2012-2013 timeframe will provide periodic data reports, facilitate access to the database by DOE and others, and develop protocols for recruiting homeowners to participate in energy efficiency research projects. This document summarizes the outcomes achieved in the jointly-funded project, describes major project activities, discusses future plans for the homes and data, and provides details on project costs and schedule performance. This summary document emphasizes BTP programmatic interests and is a companion to a recently published report prepared for NEEA (Larson et al) that provides greater detail on the technical approach to metering and data management, and that provides an interim report on the types of data being acquired from the metered homes.

2. Project Outcomes

This project installed comprehensive energy end use metering systems in 101 homes across the Pacific Northwest region, enabling detailed collection of energy consumption data. The 101 homes are drawn from a larger sample (1400 homes) that is statistically representative of the residential building stock in the Pacific Northwest region of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Western Montana. While the small sample size and the process of recruitment means that the set of 101 homes does not maintain statistical integrity, these homes are believed to be representative of the regional building stock. Further, the distribution of the 101 homes across the region, as shown in Table 1, is representative of regional climatic diversity which ranges from moderate summer and winter temperatures in Western Washington and Oregon (where peak energy consumption is limited to a short and mild winter), to the arid areas of Eastern Washington (where peak consumption coincides with a hot and dry summer) and the mountainous areas of Idaho and Montana that experience very cold winters and warm summers. Further, the geographic distribution of the homes provides good representation for areas served by both investor-owned and public utilities, which is important for future use of the data in more effectively targeting utility-managed efficiency programs.

Table 1. Distribution of Metered Homes Within the Northwest

Region Total Puget Sound area of Washington 36 Western Oregon 30 Eastern Washington 16 Idaho 14 Western Montana 5

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After securing homeowner agreement to participate in the project, each home was characterized (age, lot orientation, construction, etc.), a home energy audit was conducted, and a survey was completed to collect occupant information (number of occupants, occupations, commute patterns, etc.). Comprehensive metering systems were then installed to monitor power consumed at the whole home level, indoor and outdoor temperature, and energy consumption for the following end uses:

• Well pumps, spas and other major electric loads • Heating and cooling systems (19 electric resistance, 25 heat pumps, 57 natural gas) • Domestic hot water (60 electric, 39 natural gas, 2 central boilers) • Appliances, including refrigerators, freezers, dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers, and

ranges. In total, 123 refrigerators and 46 freezers are metered. • Electronic plug loads, including televisions, DVD players, cable boxes, gaming consoles,

computers, computer peripherals, and space heaters. 160 televisions are metered. • Lighting (1,900 lighting loggers are installed)

A number of singular specialty appliances are also metered, including a wine refrigerator, an elliptical exercise system, one large tropical fish tank and one charging station for a Nissan Leaf. Each of the home metering systems are connected to a central database through a secure cellular data network. Ongoing maintenance and analysis of the data will be supported by NEEA through 2013, with periodic reports made available reporting on data accumulation and providing observations on end use characteristics. After at least one full year of data has been acquired, an aggregated database with all personally identifiable information removed will be made available to DOE, academia, and utilities.

3. Project Approach

This project was designed to capitalize upon the 2011 Residential Building Stock Assessment (RBSA), an extensive study completed by NEEA periodically to support the Northwest power planning process (see NPCC 2010). The RBSA study uses a rigorous process to develop a representation of the residential building population in the Pacific Northwest region (Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Western Montana). PNNL and NEEA recognized that the statistically representative sample developed in the RBSA could serve as a pool from which homeowners could be recruited to participate in a metering program resulting in an extensive database of consumption patterns inmodern homes with modern appliances. This new database would provide a significant update to regional studies conducted in the 1980s (Pratt, 1989) and be a significant addition to the data available to researchers nationally as well. Further, PNNL and NEEA researchers believed that the recruited homeowners could form a pool interested in participating in future activities, including testing energy-efficient appliances, performing energy efficiency retrofits, or human behavior studies. The following section provides a summary of the RBSA1, the process used to recruit participants for this project, the sub-metering protocol used in this project, and the system developed to acquire and archive data. Residential Building Stock Assessment The RBSA is statistically designed to collect energy use characteristics over a large and diverse sample (in excess of 1,400 sites) with the goal of providing statistically valid representation of the region’s residential populations (with suitable statistical weightings and confidence interval limitations). The RBSA was based upon a staged random sample of the population of households in each of seven sub-regions (divided between public power utilities and investor-owned utilities) that were designed to

1 The RBSA was not part of the scope of the DOE-funded project, but provides a critical foundation for this project.

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distinguish differences in climate and other features within the larger region. The first stage used a phone survey organized around a random selection of utility customer records where such records were available. The remaining areas were called using random digit dialing for both land lines and cellular phones. The phone survey was administered to all willing participants. Each sampling area was assigned a target so that the required samples were collected with the distribution required across the region. Each completed survey was catalogued as a “complete” and became the sampling frame for the next phase of the RBSA. The second stage used the phone survey to identify residences that would be targeted for a detailed characteristics audit that was integral to RBSA data collection. In this second stage, personnel visited approximately 500 homes to validate survey information, collect additional information about building characteristics for each housing type (single-family, multi-family, manufactured home), collect information about major energy systems, and test whole-home and ducting tightness. These data then form the basis for a number of estimates of the energy efficiency potential within the region’s residential buildings. The RBSA was completed throughout calendar years 2010/11 and is followed by a comparable study focusing on the region’s commercial buildings (the commercial building stock assessment – CBSA), planned for completion by the end of calendar year 2012. Homeowner Recruitment for Metering The RBSA sample frame of approximately 1,400 surveyed and 500 audited homes formed the basis for recruiting participants to the metering program, beginning with a randomized telephone survey to contact homeowners from the RBSA sample pool. Based upon initial responses, participants in the phone survey were subsequently contacted for recruitment to the metering project. Homeowners were offered incentives totaling $500 to $700 to participate in the project, with an up-front payment of $200 to $300 and annual incentives of $150 to $200 thereafter. The incentives were offered to compensate homeowners for the inconvenience of having workers in the home to install the sub-metering system and subsequent visits for maintenance, as well as reward their willingness to share information about their energy consumption. All participants were assured of privacy during data analysis and reporting. The homeowner agreement form is included as Attachment 1 to this document. (Note: PNNL submitted the recruitment and metering plans for review counsel and PNNL’s institutional review board to ensure that all human subject considerations were identified and addressed; no concerns were identified.) Metering Approach The goal of the project was to ensure comprehensive collection of energy consumption data for all significant end uses in the home. PNNL and NEEA contracted with Ecotope Incorporated to develop the metering protocol for the recruited homes, which is included as Attachment 2 to this document. The metering protocol was extensively reviewed by PNNL and NEEA buildings experts and was tested in two homes owned by NEEA personnel prior to implementation. Individual meters were used to record indoor and outdoor temperature, cumulative energy use, and instantaneous power, power factor, and voltage for all of the following end uses:

• Whole home (at service entry) • Well pumps, spas and other major electrical loads • Heating and cooling systems • Domestic hot water2 systems

2 For gas hot water units the on/off state of the unit was monitored and energy consumption was imputed based upon a one-time measurement of combustion efficiency. A similar approach was employed for gas furnaces.

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• Appliances, including refrigerators, freezers, dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers, and cooking ranges, as well as single unit specialty appliances (a wine storage unit, an exercise unit, a large tropical fish tank, and a charging station for a Nissan Leaf).

Individual meters were also used for miscellaneous plug loads, including electronics such as televisions, DVD players, cable boxes, gaming consoles, computers, computer peripherals, space heaters and similar devices. Small resistance loads such as toasters, microwaves, or clocks were excluded because they do not represent a significant power draw. Measurements are taken every five minutes and data logged by the individual meters are uploaded to the central data servers daily. Lighting was treated differently than other loads, with metering focusing on those lights that are used most frequently, rather than comprehensive metering. On average, 80% of the lighting fixtures and lamps in the homes are metered. In addition, the lighting loggers are not networked and do not communicate automatically with the central data servers. Instead, the lighting loggers are leave-behind devices that record changes of state (from on to off, etc.) and the light wattage. Approximately 1,900 lighting loggers were installed as part of the project and the data from these units are retrieved annually by technicians. Data Management Metering data are collected through a secure home network (virtual private network – VPN) that includes two firewalls. The gateway from each home to the central server is a 3G cellular router, which connects to the central network via a private cellular data network with redundant VPN routers and a secure firewall. Because this is a cellular data network and not a telephone network, the connections are always live, enabling continuous monitoring of all equipment in the network. Further, this private network offers no access to the public Internet, adding a key level of protection of homeowner privacy. Raw sensor data is automatically checked for a variety of quality parameters (e.g., out of range values) and daily quality reports are reviewed by system analysts. Once acquired by the central data servers, additional redundant data quality checks are executed as collapsed data files are created. Routine quality spot checks are also conducted, in which analysts randomly select sites, sensors, and data streams for review. Data quality measures have also been developed for the lighting data, which are retrieved and reviewed manually. A thorough description of the data network architectures and data quality programs can be found in the companion interim data report (Larson et al). 4. Future Plans and Possibilities The NEEA budget funds maintenance of the metering system, data collection, and database maintenance through the end of calendar year 2013, at which time a full report of the aggregated data will be published. Interim reports will be made available, presenting selected case studies of particular interest; the first interim report (Larson et al) is a companion to this document. These maintenance and data collection/reporting activities may be extended for up to three additional years with approval of the NEEA board, depending upon cost and the level of interest in the data collected. At a minimum, this project will develop a new data set suitable for use by researchers seeking to understand modern residential energy consumption or to validate building energy models and to utilities seeking to develop new load profiles or more effectively target energy efficiency programs. NEEA is working with a steering committee, which includes PNNL researchers, to determine when and how a version of the database with all personally identifiable information removed can be shared with DOE, utilities, researchers and other interested parties. The policies and procedures for gaining access to the database are expected to be released in the first quarter of 2013.

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In addition to providing data on current energy consumption patterns, PNNL and NEEA envisioned that the 101 homes, with one full year of data as an energy consumption baseline, would be ideal for testing new technologies (e.g., heat pump hot water heaters, energy-efficient appliances, non-intrusive load monitoring systems, etc.), evaluating the real-world cost-benefit considerations for efficiency retrofit measures, or undertaking consumer behavior research. It is our expectation that a significant fraction of the homeowners participating in the current program would have a higher-than-average willingness to participate in such programs. Having an established testbed with a meaningful, detailed energy consumption baseline (at least one year’s worth of data) could significantly accelerate energy efficiency research and deployment of measures that can meet regional or national energy efficiency goals. Toward that end, NEEA is convening a steering group that will develop protocols for evaluating, prioritizing, and implementing such research and evaluation projects in these 101 homes, following one full year of data collection. These research and evaluation projects would require new funding from NEEA, utilities, or some other source. With NEEA’s CBSA (Commercial Building Stock Assessment) planned for completion in late 2012, it may be of interest to DOE to assess whether a comparable project could create a sample set of metered commercial buildings. The CBSA follows a rigorous process to develop an inventory of commercial buildings across the Pacific Northwest and collects significant amounts of data characterizing many buildings within each of the building types defined by NEEA. (In fact, more survey and characterization effort goes into the CBSA than into the RBSA, as the Northwest Power Planning Council assessments have shown that there is greater energy efficiency potential in commercial buildings than in residential.) While it would not be realistic to meter a sample that is representative of all commercial buildings, it would certainly be feasible to address a representative set within one or two building types, depending upon which building types are of greatest importance to DOE. For example, NEEA has expressed near-term interest in getting detailed consumption data for medium-scale office and “big-box” retail buildings, with longer-term interest in clinical and small-scale office buildings. 5. Project Cost and Schedule Summary

The DOE contribution to this project began in October 2010 and continued through January 2012 when installation of the sub-metering systems in all 101 homes was completed and acquisition of data to the central database was fully operational for all 101 homes. The total cost of the jointly funded project was $2.1MM and DOE provided $750,000 for the project, of which $725,000 was expended. NEEA has budgeted an additional $700,000 for system maintenance, continued data acquisition, and reporting through the end of CY 2013; no DOE funds have been directed toward those efforts. The DOE funds supported the labor associated with project planning, project management, developing the sub-metering protocol, homeowner recruitment, and meter installation. NEEA funded acquisition of the metering equipment systems, development of the data acquisition system and the central database, all legal fees associated with developing the homeowner agreements, and all incentives provided to the homeowners. Procurement of the hardware by NEEA ensured that the property could remain in the homes indefinitely, which could not have been the case if DOE funds were used for the procurement. Further, the decision to assign “ownership” of the database to NEEA was a deliberate one, as NEEA had funds available to support long-term database maintenance while DOE funding would be dependent upon congressional appropriations and programmatic priorities. (In order to cover the full costs of the project, Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and Avista Corporation, two leading NEEA members, contributed $600,000 to supplement the NEEA budget for CY11/12/13.) First funding was received from DOE in October 2010 and PNNL launched the project in November. The first three milestones were completed as scheduled in the original statement of work (SOW) filed with DOE:

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• Residential sampling methodology defined completed 12-01-2010 • Protocol for gathering field characteristics defined completed 01-30-2011 • Sub-metering protocols and sampling methodology developed completed 01-30-2011

With consent of DOE, the remaining milestones associated with the DOE-funded work scope were rescheduled to better coincide with NEEA’s schedule for completion of the RBSA (the original project plan submitted to DOE reflected the federal fiscal year, whereas NEEA’s fiscal year coincides with the calendar year and the RBSA schedule reflected that budget cycle). All critical path revised milestones were successfully met. One milestone was delayed three months, but this milestone was not a critical path activity and did not impact the overall project schedule. The project milestones, with the revised planned date shown in parentheses, are listed below:

• Homeowner recruitment complete (09-30-2011) completed 12-30-2011 • Sub-meter installation initiated (10-01-2011) initiated 10-01-2011 • Sub-meter installation complete (12-31-2011) completed 12-30-2011 • Data collection initiated (11-30-2011) initiated 10-30-2011

NEEA completed the RBSA in the summer of 2011 and began recruiting homeowners in October. All sub-metering systems were installed in the 101 homes according to the revised schedule and data acquisition was successfully initiated in October 2011. 6. References

Larson, Ben et al. June 25, 2012. “Residential Building Stock Assessment Metering Study: Interim Report.” Prepared for the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. NPCC 2010. “Sixth Northwest Conservation and Electric Power Plan.” Northwest Power and Conservation Council, Portland, Oregon. Council Document 2010-09. Pratt, Robert G., C.C. Conner, E.E. Richman, K.G. Rigland, W.F. Sandusky, M.E. Taylor, 1989. “Description of Electric Energy Use in Single-Family Residences in the Pacific Northwest, End-Use Load and Consumer Assessment Program.” Prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC06-76RL0 1830.

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ATTACHMENT 1

Homeowner Metering Participation Agreement

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ATTACHMENT 2

Metering Insallation Protocol

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